What is the first piece of recorded human history that we can read and understand today?

Question

What is the first piece of recorded human history that we can read and understand today?

Answer 1

try Buddhism...makes sense

Answer 2

If you mean historical writing, then I think the answer to your question is "The King's List", which is a list of the Sumerian kings dating from before 2000 BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_ki...

The Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" dates from even earlier, about 2700 BC. It is a work of mythology and the world's oldest known work of fiction. However, it may also contain some history: Gilgamesh was a historical Sumerian king.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gil...

In general, Sumerian cuneiform writing is the world's oldest writing sytem that has been deciphered.

http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneif...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform

The oldest deciphered documents come from the Sumerian city of Uruk. In 1929 the German archeologist Julius Jordan found thousands of tablets in a temple at Uruk (Erech). The oldest are simply lists and labels, dating from before 3000 BC.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/124698

http://www.atlastours.net/iraq/uruk.html

http://books.google.ru/books?id=7OZciq66...

There are older documents that have been dicovered, for example the Kish tablet that dates from around 3500 BC. However, it has not been deciphered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_tablet

Recently a tablet was found in Pakistan that  dates from around 5500 BC, which may be the world's earliest writing, but this has also not been deciphered.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...

Answer 3

Do you mean written in language or something that we can interpret as having meaning?

I'm thinking of the stone etching of a giraffe in a rope harness being led by a human in a prehistoric oasis in the Sahara.  I think they have dated that image to over 10,000 yrs ago.

Answer 4

would say the cave art of Southern France. It depicts the adventures and everyday living and, hunting of the animals there, going back 25,000 years. The art work is very clear and formal, tell of the animals that live thee, the people that hunted them, etc.